The Young Seigneur eBook

“While another contingent meets it further south,
where our progress is well known. So we shall
win the centre itself of the Dominion. Let us
possess the North, says our Peter the Hermit, and we
can rest sure of the whole. Yes, let us possess
the North! let us populate the shores of Hudson’s
Bay!” the enthusiast cried, losing himself in
his vision, “Let us possess the shores of Hudson’s
Bay, where d’Iberville of old dislodged our
enemies!”

“Peter the Hermit!” laughed Chamilly.
“What a name for our jolly old Cure of Colonization.
But all that is well enough for ecclesiastics to recommend,
since none others would invite their friends to die
on those refrigerated wastes.—­Yet the people
themselves are heroically willing.”

“Our next ambition,” proceeded De La Lande,
absorbed in his enthusiasm and quite guileless of
any personal enmities, “is the conquest of the
United States. Northern Maine is French Canadian.
In New England we count half a million. Lowell,
Worcester, Lawrence, Nashua and Fall River are ours.
In farms, in parishes, in solid masses, we shall establish
ourselves on the banks of the Merrimac as we have on
our own historic streams, to increase and multiply
and possess the land, replacing the degenerate New
Englander, possedentes januas hostium, performing
a divine mission, working out a high destiny for our
language and the Catholic faith, and establishing
a new, magnificent State out of the portions of those
destroyed, over which shall fly the lilies of old—­”

“We shall re-unite at last again with France!
The affection of this remnant of her children, turned
adrift in their few arpents of snow, has never died
towards the land so changed from the time of our forefathers.
It is still to us the Palestine of our speech, our
history and our faith of St. Louis! We are the
American France! We are all ready. We are
the people of God. In the words of a brother:
’This blood was set in America in the midst
of a material world, like France in Europe, to regenerate
these peoples and perpetuate the reign of ideals.
God has willed it: ‘GESTA DEI PER FRANCOS!’”

Chamilly turned to Chrysler as the school master ended,
and said with a smile: “Do you not think
there is enterprise in a people like this?”

CHAPTER XVIII.

A DISAPPEARING ORDER.

“Qu’il est triste d’etre
vaincu!—­”

—­DU CALVET.

From Quinet who had been deliberately dealing with
his dessert, now came words:

“Mistaken impulses! Led after will o’
the wisps by dreamers and designers! If it were
not that all movements work but one way, like the
backward and forward of a machine—­towards
advancement, these things would make a man
despond.”